data loops and other strange beasts

from Education Week:

Whether schools will know how to make use of data collected through value-added statistical techniques is an open question, however.

Daniel F. McCaffrey, a senior statistician in the Pittsburgh office of the Santa Monica, Calif.-based RAND Corp., studied 32 Pennsylvania school districts taking part in the first wave of a state pilot program aimed at providing districts with value-added student-achievement data in mathematics.

He and his research colleagues surveyed principals, other administrators, teachers, and parents in the districts involved in the program and compared their responses with those from other districts having similar demographic characteristics.

“We found it was really having no effect relative to the comparison districts,” Mr. McCaffrey said.

Even though educators, for instance, seemed to like the data they were getting and viewed the information as useful, few were doing anything with the results, he said. Twenty percent of the principals didn’t know they were participating in the study, Mr. McCaffrey said, noting also that the program was still young at that point in the evaluation process.

Despite such challenges, other speakers at the conference argued that the use of value-added methodology should become more widespread. Said Robert Gordon, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank: “The way we will learn about implementation problems, I think, is to implement.”

New Uses Explored for ‘Value Added’ Data
by Debra Viadero
May 28, 2008

Oh yes, I agree. There is much to be learned from implementations of all types. One after another. Implementation upon implementation upon implementation.

Implementation is the path to enlightenment.


data-driven loops & noise